


Apprehension

by Isaya



Series: Force Ghosts [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2019-11-01 11:47:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17866679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isaya/pseuds/Isaya
Summary: Thoughts on meeting again - people they knew but don't know yet.Last part was them thinking about meeting Palpatine, this part is about Obi-Wan and Vaderkin (possibly) meeting again, and Yoda's thoughts on Vaderkin.





	1. Obi-Wan

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've been wanting to continue this since I wrote tha last part and today I finally sat down and actually wrote a chapter.  
> This is just Obi-Wan's part so far, the other two will follow soon-is hopefully. But I wanted to get his chapter up today as an incentive to write the others in a timely fashion.
> 
> _Apprehension_ is pretty much just thoughts and internal monologue but I hope that the next installment if I ever get that far will have actual plot happening.

And then there was the _other_ person he dreaded to meet. _Anakin_.

If he remembered this mission correctly – and he barely remembered it at all, it had been a minor one of little importance in the grand scheme of things – it happened around half a standard year before, well, anything really. Naboo, Padmé, _Anakin_ , Maul, _Qui-Gon’s death_. The beginnings of the end. The tipping point that made the clone wars inescapable… or so it seemed.

_Anakin._

He couldn’t fathom how he was to feel about him. His friend, his brother, his son, his student, his _enemy_.

He oscillated between dread, apprehension, delight, anger, hope… He was a ball of contradicting emotions and he hadn’t gotten any better at dealing with them.

There was a dark part of him that thought it best to kill the child on sight – that way he could not bring about the darkness he did (and if _he_ fell instead by such an act then so be it) – but Anakin hadn’t done _anything_ yet. And he was self-aware enough to know that he failed him. The Jedi failed him.

When Anakin first came to the temple – if someone had trusted him, if someone had _given him a chance_ without judgement… maybe things would have been different.

If Anakin had had a proper Master. If he had been taught by anyone other than the newly orphaned Padawan that had been thrown away for him and therefore resented him… He knew later that Qui-Gon hadn’t been throwing him away, that he had actually kept him on as a Padawan after he deemed him ready for the trials because he dreaded letting him go but at the time he hadn’t known any of that. And he certainly hadn’t recognized his feelings for what they were. It never even occurred to him – not until years later – that he resented Anakin for being his replacement, for usurping his spot as Master Qui-Gon Jinn’s Padawan.

He’d had many years on Tatooine to wonder where things started to go awry. Anakin’s fall had completely blind-sighted him after all.

Looking back, there had been signs. But back then he either hadn’t recognized Anakin’s struggles at all or attributed it to mere ‘normal war-time’ stress they all were under. There’d been moments (quite a few actually) where he’d wondered about Anakin’s friendship with Palpatine – it probably should have sent alarm bells ringing far earlier than it did but… he’d been a Jedi. He hadn’t questioned it enough. He’d put his incomprehension up to his different upbringing. The Jedi were his family (yes, sadly ironic when he thought about it) in a way they’d never been Anakin’s.

And he’d attributed _his_ interest in his Padawan to the boy’s part in the liberation of Naboo. Well, he hadn’t been wrong about that, had he? It just had been for completely different reasons than he assumed – it had nothing to do with gratitude after all.

Regardless.

He couldn’t change his past. He could only learn from it and change his future – if this wasn’t some strange force hallucination.

But what did that mean for him? For Anakin? For everything else?

He feared Anakin. Not even for what he was capable of, no, but for the fact that he still loved him. Had loved him still even when he thought that everything that was good about him was gone. Strange, how he only truly realised that he loved his brother when he was losing him ( _had lost him_ ).

He had seen Darth Vader at his worst and yet.

He couldn’t believe that Darth Vader was who Anakin had been destined to be. The boy he met leaving Tatooine had been far, far too light to be fated for such darkness.

How much of that was a lie _(wishful thinking)_ he told himself?

He didn’t think it was one but… he didn’t trust himself any longer when it came to Anakin. He’d long since been compromised he knew that now and he was _biased_ one way or another. His perception was coloured by his bias.

He couldn’t imagine meeting him again.

He wanted to hug him and never let go.

He wanted to strangle him and be done with it.

He wanted to never take his eye of his (little) brother ever again.

He never wanted to see him again.

He wanted…

He didn’t know what he wanted.

He couldn’t…

He took a deep breath and released it.

_You have half a year_ he reminded himself _even if you do not know now how to face him, there’s still time._

Maybe there was something at the temple that would help him attain some clarity, not that he didn’t have enough reasons to dread going there, too.

_A temple full of ghosts._

He shook himself.

No. They weren’t ghosts yet. And if he could help it, they wouldn’t be. Only… They were ghosts to him. In a way every time his Master spoke to him he had double vision. Whenever he looked at him, he also saw his corpse. Whenever he thought of the temple he saw a shell, a mausoleum, _a mass grave._

He hoped it would get better once he acclimatised to his situation. It’d been less than three days.

Funny, how whenever he’d thought back to the temple on Tatooine while he mourned the his fellow Jedi, he didn’t really think about the end there. He remembered the good times, a temple filled with life… The empty temple had been overshadowed by Ana-- no, Vader, no, _Anakin_ kneeling at Sidious feet and _Mustafar_.

But now that he was about to return to the temple far, far before the end when everyone was still alive… he could only think of _death_.

He shuddered and carefully lowered his shields a little to remind himself. _The force was_ alive _. It was so full of life it was brimming._ He’d never noticed before. How could he have? It had been the norm, what he was used to. But after all those years in exile when the force felt like a mere shadow of what it had once been – still encompassing everything, everywhere, holding all things together but quieter somehow, almost brittle and yet… never faltering, never _less_ – he noticed.

And this time, this time he would pay attention.

Attention to what his senses were telling him. Attention to what his feelings were and where they came from. He would _acknowledge_ them and not only to himself in the quiet of the night or whatever he had been doing. _No._

This time he would pay attention to the encroaching darkness in the force, in the republic, and more importantly his fellow Jedi. _Anakin_.

How much did he miss because he had been so … out-of-sync with himself that he couldn’t recognize the signs in others (glaring signs at times) because he didn’t recognize them in himself because it had never even occurred to him?

He was going in circles.  

He couldn’t change his past. He _would change his future._

He would… give Anakin a chance. He didn’t know how but… He failed him once. He wouldn’t fail him again.

And if he had to leave the order for it then… so be it. He was far less attached to the order as a whole than he had been. Not as it was now.

He had lived outside the order, he could do it again. He knew now all too well that the order was far from perfect, no matter how romanticized it had been by the rebellion and those in the galaxy that remembered them fondly.

Maybe… maybe that was a possibility.

He could leave the order and

He could leave the order and run.

Find a way to free Anakin (and Shmi?) and run to the other end of the galaxy to keep him far away from the order – Yoda had been right, Anakin had been too old but that had been a failing of the order and not Anakin’s – and keep him away from Sidious.

But no.

No matter how he longed to leave all this behind and return to exile (and pretend it wasn’t his problem because there was no problem yet) he knew he never could. Not when he knew of what was coming.

Anakin did not change that.

He could not stand idly by and watch the republic fall to ruin once again.

He would stay. He would stay and stand against the darkness even if he did not know how, did not know if he had the strength.

But he could not fail, not again. He owed it to Qui-Gon, to Luke, to Leia, to Padmé, even Bail… _to Anakin_. They had all died fighting the darkness (in the end) after all.

Tomorrow, their mission would end. He wasn’t ready to return to Coruscant but then, he probably never would be. So it was best that it would be sooner rather than later.

He would brave the temple. He would seek meditation. Maybe he would seek Yoda for advice as he had done before over a vision. He would check the archives. He would search for proof, for signs of _his_ machinations and he would be ready when the time came.

The time for what he wasn’t quite sure.


	2. Yoda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yoda's part.  
> He kept drifting off so this took a bit longer to post than I'd hoped but here it is.

Apart from _him_ there was also one other person that Yoda dreaded to meet: young Anakin Skywalker. He could not condemn the child for deeds yet undone but did he want to invite their doom with open arms?

While Skywalker had betrayed the order and everything it stood for, the order had failed him in turn long before and not due to any fault if the order but due to circumstance.

No. That wasn't correct either. Blame lay on many shoulders. Skywalker himself, yes, his upbringing, the war, the former (future) chancellor... And with an order that had been rigid in it’s traditions and therefore ill equipped to deal with Skywalker’s particular circumstances.

There were many reasons for what had occurred. A large part could be laid at _his_ feet but there had been too many factors for them to predict their doom.

Things seemed to progress organically for too long and by the time the machinations of the Sith were discovered (or even suspected) they had already been halfway down that road.

They hadn't taken Maul seriously enough. Maul. Was there a way to warn Qui-Gon, he wondered. The Zabrak needed to be dealt with but was there a way to lessen the cost? Qui-Gon's death led to Darth Tyrannus. It pained him to think of his former pupil's fall.

And Dooku was only the first to fall. Others had followed. Skywalker may have been the most powerful and the last to fall – and certainly the most devastating on a galactic scale by far – but he had _not_ been the only one.

The Clone War had been hard on the Jedi fighting it. None of them, not even Yoda himself, had remained unchanged by it.

Even if he had remained unchanged by the War, no one survived the hunt for his people’s extinction without showing for it.

And as big a part Skywalker had played in this – especially after – he was not however responsible for Order 66.

At that point, Yoda had often wondered, had it really made a difference?

Of course it did, he knew that but sometimes he hadn't been able not to question just how inevitable the fall of the order had been – and he had not liked the conclusions he had drawn.

He didn’t know when it started that the order stopped moving with the times, stopped adapting. They had turned rigid in their beliefs, unchanging, like a solid rock in the stream of time, forgetting that as water chipped away at every stone in its path time would chip away at them. And that what would not bend would break at some point and every stronghold crumbled to ruins in the end.

They had grown arrogant, hadn’t they.

Skywalker was failure on many levels and Yoda vowed to learn from what had transpired in his past.

Maybe he would wait and see.

Force knows, his presence might inadvertently change something and Qui-Gon John would never stumble across the boy in the first place.

Yoda didn't really believe that either. As strong as the force was in the boy and his importance, it was obvious that the force would want him found. Whether that was by Qui-Gon or someone else – and Yoda much preferred him found by Qui-Gon and not, for example, Maul.

And even if they somehow missed him, he wasn’t sure if he could stand by and let the boy remain a slave now he knew about him.

Getting involved with slavers in any way was not something the Jedi did but their inaction had not done them any favours. But they could hardly declare war on slavery. The political situation didn’t allow for it and they also weren’t exactly equipped for such an undertaking.

On another note, why had they not cared that slavery ran rampant in the Outer Rim when it was outlawed in the Republic and they were supposed to uphold the law?

And outside of that, when did they start clinging harder to the status quo than their morals? All their teachings and they’d forgotten that a rule is only worth its implementation. 

When had they started condoning slavery unwittingly? By inaction as well as ...

After all, a clone army was only marginally better than a slave army, if that.

In the beginning they hadn’t known the full extent of the clones’ sentience and self-awareness but how much (or how little) did that excuse?

But he was drifting off topic. He had sought quiet to meditate so that he could ponder the question of Skywalker.

_The chosen one._

Chosen, but for what? What did “restoring the balance" really entail? They had assumed (been sure even) that it meant the destruction of the Sith.

But what was balance if there was only light without darkness? The world was full of shadows, some deeper than others.

Had they been right and the prophecy pertained the destruction of those that would warp the balance – As in the Sith? Or had true balance only been achieved when no one of either side remained?

Empty scales, tipped neither here nor there, were perfectly balanced, after all. If one scale was full of _wuli_ nuts and the other only held two, their balance was skewed.

He refused to believe that the prophecy meant the end of both ideologies. Because if it did...

No. The Force would not have sent him back had that been the answer. And sent him back it did.

He could only presume that he was to learn from what he lived through and that he should find a way to avoid the pitfalls that the Sith’s conspiracies inadvertently left in their wake.

In a way, Skywalker was a conglomeration of shatterpoints.

But what should he do? Did he let things play out as they will or should he send someone to collect the child pre-emptively? But if he die that then what would happen to the Naboo? What about Maul? Could they afford to let him be in case they’d removed young Skywalker earlier? But what were the benefits of collecting him to the temple earlier?

And how would he even explain how he suddenly send someone to the outer rim? Of course, there was always the possibility of engineering a mission to the Outer Rim that ultimately led to Tattooine but was there any point to that, knowing that the Naboo negotiations mission would end there as well? Unless something happened that prevented the hyper drive damage.

And if they sought shelter some place else? Was Naboo worth the price of Queen Amidala's Vote of no Confidence?

He shuddered at the thought. No, he could not sacrifice a planet for what might possibly be only a slight delay. No, he couldn't show his hand too early. 

With what he had seen of the Sith during the war and heard whispers of certain (at least somewhat force-sensitve) agents even on a place as remote as Dagobah had been... Just because Maul had been Sidious' pupil didn't mean that Sidious' Master had to be dead yet. 

Dooku had been his Apprentice and all the while he'd been grooming Skywalker to be the count's replacement. 

And none of them had noticed until it had been too late.

If Yoda let Skywalker return to the temple (for the first time in the boy's life) he would make sure that the Chancellor did not have such easy access to the boy. And it seemed to Yoda that letting the Blockade of Naboo run its course was his best bet.

He wouldn't interfere until the boy was actually at the temple. There would be no rejection due to his age if he could help it. It had been the earliest wedge driven between the boy and the order. 

Maybe he would insist they discuss his admission without him in the room. And best without Obi-wan in the room either. How Qui-Gon had handled the Council's sending Skywalker away certainly hadn't helped the rocky start Kenobi and Skywalker had had. 

His grand-padawan was a good man and a good Jedi but Yoda got the feeling that he wouldn't be the best teacher for Skywalker. 

He would rather give him to Obi-wan again. They had been a good team, a unit, until the war and Palpatine's machinations pushed them apart by crumbling the very foundation they stood on.

Maybe... maybe he should do something about the boy's mother. Having her freed - whether they'd be allowed to keep contact or not - would probably ease some of the worries that had swamped the boy.

Either way, he would keep an eye on the boy and follow his progress closely. He just had to remember to separate the boy as he was now from the Sith Lord he had been and could still be. 

He wanted to believe the best of his fellow Jedi but enough had distrusted the boy at first due to his age and upbringing, how much worse would that distrust be if they knew... No, he would keep his knowledge hidden, even from the Council. His knowledge concerning the boy at least. Until the boy had had a chance to be accepted. 

And then, mayhap, Yoda could speak to the Council of a vision... he would wait. If they managed to keep the Sith away from the boy... perhaps there would not be a reason to warn others of how dark of a potential he may have had.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not beta-ed, minimal editing, pretty much just spell-checked.
> 
> I think I have a problem with my characters going off tangent *sigh*


	3. Vaderkin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vaderkin's part.
> 
> Warnings: Vader/Anakin is still very far away from even a semblance of a good head space  
> Twisted views on slavery  
> Suicidal thoughts  
> Suicidal ideation  
> He's depressed and spiralling  
> So be careful if any of that is a trigger for you.   
> (If there's anything that should have warned for but missed, please notify me.)

_Obi-Wan._

His former ... Master. The only slave master he'd had that he'd also been friends with. _Conflicted_ did not even begin to describe his feelings when he thought of the man.

A large part of him - mainly the part that hated that traitor for so many years - still wanted the man dead. No matter that he had already killed him once.

Another part of him wanted to grab on to Obi-Wan and never let go. But that was sentiment, a weakness and so it should not be indulged. Weirdly, both his Sith part and his Jedi part (or what remained of it) agreed on that point - although for _very_ different reasons.

It was sentiment, and feelings should not be indulged. They should be released into the force, they were dangerous after all.

It was... caring and caring was a weakness. There was no strength in caring. Caring weakened ones resolve. Caring invited _hurt_ and while pain could be turned into strength - not this kind. It undermined ones conviction. It made one second guess. It made one hesitate. In short, it made one _weak._

No. He should not care for Obi-Wan. He had cared, once. And Obi-Wan had cut him down. He had cared, once. And he had been betrayed. He had cared, once. And it had been his downfall.

No, not his downfall. His rise to greatness had begun that way. _Greatness_. He scoffed, a sound that seemed off coming from such a young body. What was greatness but yet another lie?

No. Obi-Wan deserved only death. He had died far too quickly the last time. His death should have been drawn out, painful, a retaliation for everything he'd done, everything he'd taken, ev--

_No._

That was Palpatine talking.

Had he not mulled it over before? At the time it had been pointless, given that he thought Kenobi had died after Mustafar, fallen to the Order whether by the clones, the bounty hunters, the Inquisitors...

Force, the clones.

He lunged to the side of the road to empty his stomach. He did not know why it was the clones that suddenly hit him. Of all his, well, crimes for lack of a better word his complacency when it came to the clones (not that the Jedi would have considered it complacency) was really not a big ... it hardly could be counted.

And yet... that had been _before_ and he had already supported slavery. What slave... How could a former slave even work as a slaver. Had he not left Tatooine with the expressed purpose to _come back and free the slaves_? Had there ever been anything good about Anakin Skywalker?

Had he any redeeming qualities at all? If he...

Maybe he should just end it all now. If he was destined to go down that path, if he was slated to ... what was the point?

Was there any point? Had there ever been any point to all this?

That future - his past - had been erased... Why could he not have been erased with it?

Sweet oblivion...

But no.

There was no sweet oblivion, no salvation in death - not that he deserved salvation, far from it. Instead, he remembered.

And yet... how could he remember it if it hadn't happened? Was it even real? Was any of this real? Was he really walking back from Watto's or was that yet another trick, another illusion, another trap, another delusion...

What was the point in any of this? What did it matter?

Why would his feelings matter?

(Had they ever?)

None of his Masters had cared. _None._ Some - Obi-Wan - may have pretended but he knew now that meant nothing.

Obi-Wan had been a Jedi after all. A Jedi until the bitter end. And Jedi did not feel, did not care. They had no use for feelings or emotions, so why should he?

The only thing emotions were good for was manipulation of the the weak.

And yet...

He could not shake them off. They were a mess, twisted, burned, bunched together so much that they were unrecognizable... and yet. They were there.

He still could not tell how he felt about the possibility of seeing Obi-Wan again. It was a mess far too complex for him to decipher. He recognized the rage, the hate... but there was also sorrow and something else he could not name.

A part of himself hated himself for missing him, his father-brother, even still after all these years. How could he wish to meet his slaver again? But then, as slavers go, was Obi-Wan not the most benevolent?

And yet... was he not the only of his Masters that really attempted to kill him? Had he not left him to die, burning alive? Had he not been the one to deliver him straight into his true Master's hands? Had he not...

He shuddered and came to a stop. He had returned to the hovel but he could not... He stared at the door as if it was an insurmountable wall in his path. How could he enter?

He was not worthy of her warmth and she deserved better - but was her warmth not _his right_? She was his... she was the boy's mother. She had always - dared he even to think it - loved him. Right until the end. Even as he failed her.

Did she not deserve better? Would she not be better off without him? What good had he ever brought her?

She had lived without him before, she could do it again. She'd been ' _freed_ ' even. Right... freed in name only, after all, there was no freedom. No. Her owner had only freed her to marry her - and he so wished to wring the man's neck for daring to presume... but even without her actually being at the farm stead that time, he had been able to tell that she had been ... if not happy then at the very least content with her life there.

The homestead had had a feeling reminiscent of home... hadn't it?

Not that it mattered now.

No, there was no need for him to sully her doorstep any longer. No, he would go into the desert.

Yes. He would go into the desert.

He would remove himself from the equation. If he was not there, no one could force him, tempt him, make him (let him) commit more of the atrocities of his past.

It was safer, was it not, if he was not there. His mother would be better of without a son like him. She really did deserve better.

Yes. He would go into the desert.

No more Masters. No more. No more conflicted feelings. It did not matter how he felt about potentially meeting Obi-Wan again, if he never would. Obi-Wan did not need him. He would not even miss him. Obi-Wan did not know him yet after all. If he was dead, no one could abandon him in a pool of lava. If he was not around, Obi-Wan never would have to pretend to care...

Yes. He would set himself free. He would go into the desert.

"Ani? What are you still doing outside? Come on inside, there is a storm approaching."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies that this took so long to write.
> 
> It's shorter than I expected compared to the rest but that's how his thought process spiralled.  
> It was less hate-filled than I thought it would be but I think he's still just so emotionally _tired_.
> 
> And before anyone gets worried, yes, he did follow Shmi back inside their home. He did not go into the desert.

**Author's Note:**

> I've spell-checked this and gave it a quick look-over but it hasn't been betaed and any editing will only happen after all three parts are up.
> 
> Obi-Wan didn't to cooperate with me and kept thinking about the general situation and circling back instead of mainly worrying about meeting Vaderkin, but... it is what it is.


End file.
